What Must Be Done
by TheMacUnleashed
Summary: The mission is all that matters, but that doesn't lessen the guilt. Gen, non-graphic torture.


**Title: **What Must be Done  
**Rating: ~**PG-13  
**Pairings: **Gen: Ahsoka, Anakin, Obi-Wan  
**Warnings: **Non-graphic torture.  
**Summary: **The mission is all that matters, but that doesn't lessen the guilt.**  
****Notes: **For my hurt/comfort bingo card: the prompt was "undercover: forced to hurt your partner."

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The knife in Ahoka's hand is heavier than the light cylinder of her lightsaber, and it doesn't feel _right_. Lightsabers are for defense, as she's been told a thousand times, mostly by masters other than her own, and even though she's hurt people with hers -killed, even- she still knows all the time that it is a tool designed foremost to save lives, not to take them.

The knife is heavy and longer than her forearm, from the shining tip to the leather hilt. Small marks have been carved into the grip, sigils, she thinks, to make the spill of blood mean something. They can treat this with as much reverence as they like, but it's still a weapon, and she'll be kriffed if any blood that's ever been spilled by the blade was for the sake of preserving life.

Next to her, the clan's leader says something in his guttural speech, and the words echo strangely around the underground chamber.

"He wants you to get on with it," the translator says, and his impatient gesture implies that he wants blood to be staining the floor just as much as his father. "The gods are hungry for the blood of the traitor."

At this, the man dubbed traitor blinks, barely visible in the dark cavern, all torches extinguished before Ahsoka was brought in. "Do what you must," he says simply, with only a minimum of bravado flickering into his voice.

_Do what you must_.

The people next to her, the ones who spend most of their time as nomads roaming the desert, only returning to the sacred chambers to right the worst of sins committed, will take it as bravery, perhaps even nobleness, a sacrifice and a sinner repenting his ways and accepting his fate. Ahsoka, though, knows better: Anakin is giving her permission. The mission comes first, and to reveal her cover would mean instant death at this point. She, as the alleged victim of his betrayal, can slow things. She can keep him alive until Rex and his men track them down.

Ahsoka steps forwards, and she doesn't mutter the plea for forgiveness that she's fervently reciting in her mind, knowing how it would bounce from wall to wall of the chamber, revealing that she knew who her master was before he wielded his saber before them for foolish reasons; that she isn't just his innocent traveling companion, stranded when their ship crashed here, a planet the Trade Federation is eager to get their claws on, for reasons unknown to the Republic.

_I'm sorry._

XxX

Lightsabers burn and cauterize the flesh they cut through and give off the scent of ozone and lightning, wild and stormy.

Knives just cut and spill blood. It smells like war and carnage.

XxX

She hasn't kept track of the minutes, but it takes too long for Rex to find them.

He bursts into the chamber, a dozen men at his heels, and doesn't even flinch at the sight of her covered in blood several shades darker than her skin, and Anakin, his chest scored with wounds (they're shallow, but they don't look it, and there are far too many of them; Anakin lost consciousness -well, she hasn't kept track of the time, but it was awhile ago. Too long).

"You're under arrest in the name of the Galactic Republic-"

The leader spits something and draws a dagger from beneath his robes. "We do not recognize your authority here," the translator snarls, lunging at Rex with a sword of his own.

Rex doesn't flinch; doesn't even give a command. He fires wordlessly, a series of neatly placed shots that all meet their intended targets, and a good thing, too; they're in too small a space to allow for mistakes, probably why he didn't give the "fire at will" order to his men.

"How's General Skywalker?" he asks without preamble, and she could hug him for not demanding to know why she's the one holding the bloodied knife.

"He's unconscious," she says, and throat suddenly feels tight, and for no reason at all, it's difficult for her to speak. "I -I _tried_-"

"That's not for me to hear," Rex replies, not unkindly. "Now, let's deal with the General and get you back to the ship, yeah? I think Master Kenobi wants to talk to you."

"Right." She takes a deep breath, refuses to shudder with the unexpected sensation of relief that overcomes her. "Anakin first."

XxX

Master Kenobi, come recently to their ship from a battle won nearby, is quiet as she tells her story, and listens without letting a flicker of emotion overcome his stoic, thoughtful visage.

"We infiltrated the tribe liked you asked -it went well; they're kind to strangers and bought the story of our ship wrecking -mostly -but they didn't talk about the Separatists, and we never found out what they wanted there. Then one night the camp was invaded -they had a lot of enemies, I don't even know what other tribe it was- and Anakin didn't think twice; he told me to stay put, and he took out his lightsaber and he drove all the raiders away; he saved all of our lives -but they didn't like the Jedi; Dooku must've been telling them lies; they bought the idea that I didn't know he was a Jedi and we'd been thrown together on the ship by chance since I didn't have my 'saber with me -and since he had betrayed me, they said it was my duty to shed his blood to appease the gods; I told them I didn't want to, but they wouldn't listen, and- and-"

Now she does shudder and squeezes her hands into fists. "I'm really sorry, but Anakin told me that the mission was the most important thing and we had to keep in character-"

"Padawan Tano." Master Kenobi drops to his knee and raises a hand to rest on her shoulder. "Anakin was right. The mission was a vital one, and we know about the mineral sources there now. Rex found the data at the same compound he located you at."

"But that doesn't excuse what I did. Anakin is -he's-"

"I know." Obi-Wan gazes gravely, if kindly, at her. "I have seen him. But Ahsoka, the products of the deposits there could have destroyed several planets. That we understand why Dooku was nosing around there is vital to the prevention of-"

"But that doesn't matter!" Very rarely would she be willing to speak to any master this way, but kriff etiquette, and kriff how she's supposed to act; she just spent hours digging a knife through her master's skin and muscles, and no matter how many times she washes her skin she would swear that it's been stained by the blood that she spilled. "I tortured him. I did as they asked, and I took the knife, and he told me to, and I did, but it doesn't _matter_-"

She becomes incoherent after that, only vaguely aware of Master Kenobi's hand on her shoulder, and of his quiet reassurances that she did what she had to, that it's going to be okay, it was for the better, and a few other lies that it sickens her to hear.

XxX

Anakin is transferred when they land on Coruscant, still in a bacta tank. The Temple has the best healers on Coruscant, of course, much better than the ones on the ship. They'll heal him. They've done it a thousand times before.

"He'll be out soon," Master Kenobi says quietly as they watch him floating in the blue-green liquid. "Out and awake. The healers say that it will be two days, at most."

Ahsoka knows; she was there when they said that. They didn't sound confident. Neither does Obi-Wan.

XxX

Senator Amidala comes by on the second day, claiming that she was meeting with Master Yoda and wanted to stop in while she was there. Ahsoka knows it isn't the full truth, but she doesn't push. She never does when it comes to Anakin and the senator.

She starts to leave the Hall of Healing, for the first time in two days, but Padmé speaks first. "They said that you had to do this. That the natives made you..."

Ahsoka doesn't speak; doesn't know if she can.

"I don't blame you," Padmé says, and that helps, but not much.

XxX

"Troubled you are."

"It's been four days."

"Pull through, young Skywalker will. Stop him, the toxins cannot. Too stubborn, is he."

"I should have realized the knife had been poisoned -I should have done more-"

"Dwell forever on the possibilities, you cannot, unless wish to be driven mad, you do."

"It was my fault. I would deserve madness."

XxX

She's sleeping in front of his bacta tank when he wakes up, having refused Master Kenobi's, and later Master Unduli's tentative offers of quarters to rest in.

"Master!" she gasps as the healers rush in. He can't hear her; can't see her, but he's awake. He's _there_, and that matters more than if he knows she's been waiting for him, knows that he'll always have those faint scars on his chest, knows what she did. He's awake, fully alive, and that's all that means anything for now.

XxX

"Snips?" his voice is hoarse as she creeps into his room, watchful for any spying healers. "That you?"

"It sure is, Master." Try as she might, she can't keep her normal cheer in her voice, not now. "How are you?"

"Peachy." He turns towards her, vague, airy concern on his painkiller-ridden face. "They didn't find you out, Ahsoka? You're okay?"

Once again, it's hard to speak. "Of course I am. I'm fine."

"Tha's good," he says, and she couldn't agree with him more.


End file.
